


Come What May

by ma_rendezvous



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 06:30:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4169472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ma_rendezvous/pseuds/ma_rendezvous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after he had left, a year after Inoo had shut himself from the world he used to love, a year after a worsening depression that come to him endlessly, and at any rate, after such a long time, as if he had waited for this day to come, he met Yaotome Hikaru again, sensible and rock solid like he had never been dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come What May

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from ma_rendezvous@livejournal

On his third attempt suicide that certain night when winter was fading away, the hand Inoo Kei used to hold a knife with was immediately caught by a pair of large yet cold palms holding him so tight and never let them go. The hands came from nowhere, appearing like a ghost, literally, and under his glassy and misty eyes he could see gold sand floating around him, as it magically gathered and turned into a form of a certain someone he knew just too well. And then Inoo’s wet and swollen eyes grew wide, wider, and  _wider_  if possible as he gasped in disbelief—three quarter of his brain told him that he,  _finally_ , had gone totally  _mad_.  
  
But the certain man coming into view in front of him was  _beyond_ real; at least that's what a quarter part of his brain had tried to convince him. The guy looked  _exactly_ like the last time Inoo had seen him a year before; his brown and messy hair, his three folds of eyelids, his sharp and pointed nose and his sweet lips and his crooked teeth Inoo had missed so much. Inoo’s eyes scanned down the other’s neck and there he saw his lines of Adam’s apple he used to admire and a broad chest and a pair of musician’s hands that were holding him still. The clothes the other guy wore were the clothes he had worn on their last date ever, and Inoo remembered every,  _every_  detail of it too well.  
  
And as the knife dropped onto the bathroom floor with a loud clang, Inoo lost his breath.  
  
“Hikaru...” The name came out as a whisper from Inoo’s half parted mouth as his brown eyes laid once again to his lover’s pure black ones.  
  
“Please,” Was what Inoo heard when the ghost spoke to him. Inoo watched it as Hikaru held his wrist even tighter, he watched it as the younger tilted down his head in distress, he saw sadness in Hikaru’s orbs as they were once more eye to eye. “ _Please_. Don’t do this. Don’t— _ever_ —do this to  _me_ ,”  
  
Did Hikaru just speak to him?  
  
Or had he driven himself crazy?  
  
A year after he had left, a year after Inoo had shut himself from the world he used to love, a year after a worsening depression that come to him endlessly, and at any rate, after such a long time, as if he had waited for this day to come, he met Yaotome Hikaru again, sensible and  _rock solid_ like he had never been dead. And Inoo could see him right in front of his eyes, again, looking  _drop dead_ gorgeous like always, with all of his honesty and his love for Inoo Kei that had never seemed to change. Inoo was happy, he was  _extremely_ happy that he became so scared of what he had turned himself into.  
  
 _No, this doesn’t make any sense.  
Hikaru should have been..._  
  
Inoo snapped his hand away from Hikaru’s grasp rather harshly, making the younger of the two surprised with the act. When Hikaru parted his lips to say something, however, Inoo cupped his cheeks that very minute, leaving the two lovers wordless like never before. With his palms, Inoo felt about Hikaru’s sturdy face, drawing a circle with his right thumb on the younger’s left cheek. And as real and  _horrifying_  as it was, Inoo couldn’t help the huge wave of tears to stream so swiftly down his cheeks. He had been tired of crying on this very day, a very memorial day of Yaotome Hikaru’s death, but yet Hikaru was there, real and complete as if death had never taken its toll on him, that he couldn’t help but to cry over again.  
  
“Kei, I—”  
  
“ _FUCK YOU!!_ ” Inoo yelled, out loud and full of emotions, of anger, of scare, cutting whatever Hikaru had tried to tell him in process. He got on his knees slowly, and crashed himself onto Hikaru’s body trice as fast, encircling his arms tightly against the younger’s neck. He buried his face in Hikaru’s soft brown hair and sobbed, tightening his squeeze against the younger’s head as he felt Hikaru’s arms crawling on his back, embracing him in return. “Fuck you, you stupid  _asshole_!”  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” Hikaru repeated miserably, burying his own face on Inoo’s chest. He gasped the back of Inoo’s half wet cloth, breathing the older’s scent into his illusory lungs.  
  
“You  _died_ , you left me alone!”  
  
“I swear I didn’t plan for this, I’m so,  _sorry_ ,” Hikaru reached his hand up and cupped Inoo’s cheek with his dominant palm, half forcing the older to look at him in the eye. He tilted up his head and their faces came so close with each other, and as he stared at the rhapsodical tears streaming down from the corner of Inoo’s eyes, the ghost landed a soft and loving kiss on Inoo’s wet right cheek afterward.  
  
  
  
  
“Why did you come back?”  
  
“Because you missed me like  _crazy_?” Hikaru grinned cheerfully, showing his crooked teeth and typical goofy face to the older.  
  
Inoo fell silent, for though he knew that Hikaru was sort of joking around, the dead had hit the point. He watched it as the younger turned his head back to whatever he was doing. He stared at Hikaru’s firm back and sighed, half sobbing though his tears had stopped streaming down.  
  
Acting as if nothing had really happened in the whole year, as if he had never died, the ghost was stirring a mug of hot chocolate with a teaspoon in the kitchen with Inoo sitting on a dinning chair, his two arms crossed and rested on the table. It was amusing and scary at the same time, because it was such a domestic kind of habitude they had whenever Inoo was down, when Hikaru was still alive. And there and then, it continued in any way.  
  
Hikaru came approaching Inoo with two mugs on each of his hands; the one on the right was a white mug with the kanji ‘light’ printed in it, while the other identical one had the kanji ‘wise’, which represented both their names. He sat on Inoo’s left side like usual, placing the pairing mugs on the dinning table in front of them. And just as usual, he held Inoo’s left hand on top of the table—something he always did to calm Inoo’s nerves and showed him how much he loved him after they argued, or after what had happened to his precious Kei that brought him down.  
  
Hikaru had always felt grateful for being left-handed after meeting Inoo Kei, after all, so holding his hand felt like a gift for him.  
  
“Kei-chan,” Hikaru called, taking Inoo’s attention to him. When their eyes met, he opened his mouth and said, “I miss you too,”  
  
“No, you don’t,” Inoo frowned. His face was still as red after lots of crying, and the frown made him look even worse.  
  
“I  _do_ , I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Hikaru furrowed.  
  
“Are you going to stay?”  
  
“... No,” He answered hesitantly.  
  
“Then you’re  _not_ missing me!” Inoo’s voice somehow raised up irritatedly.  
  
“Hey, that’s selfish—”  
  
“Yeah, but you know me—”  
  
“For God’s sake, Inoo Kei!” Hikaru raised his voice, half yelling. Sighing, he tightened his hold on Inoo’s hand. “I don’t belong here. I’m  _dead_!”  
  
Inoo tilted down his head and stared at their linked hands and noted to himself that Hikaru’s hand felt freaking cold. The hands of the dead, the heat of the living had left them away. However, Inoo couldn’t help but to loosen up a bit just to entwine their fingers and tightening them together nonetheless, before looking up again and stared at those loving orbs.  
  
“... Then why are you  _here_  now?” He felt his face heated up and he wanted to cry, again. But his tears might have been running out because the water got stuck in his throat instead, making his voice came out as a half whisper; hoarse and somehow painful.  
  
“God is lending me a hand. He gave me this body for a night so that I could see you, so that I could meet you and be with you for the last time.” Hikaru said gently, leaning closer to his lover without breaking their eye contact. “I saw you trying to kill yourself day by day, and it hurts me. I don’t want that. I  _never_ want that, Kei. So stop it,  _please_? It’s torturing me. I really...”  
  
Inoo shut his eyes tightly as he fought the urge to cry. The memories of him trying to finish off himself were flasing tremendously in his head out of the blue. The first attempt was when he tried to jump off of a skyscrapper’s rooftop but had been stopped by a hand of a random worker working in that building that later voluntarily became his housemate. The second one was when he tried to overdose himself with sleeping pills but was saved again by the same person anyway, and the third was when Hikaru’s ghost appeared right in front of him to stop his stupidity. The attempt might counted three times already, but everyday he had felt like he had already been lifeless, starving himself half-dead, locking himself deep into depression that he even refused to talk to his own family. It felt like a bad dream, a sequence of nightmare, only that he's sure the nightmare would still continue after Hikaru leave him by the sun rise.  
  
“Is it really ending between the two of us, Hikaru?” He asked his lover with fear. His closed eyelids slowly lifted up and once he opened his eyes completely, he saw a loving smile on the other’s face.  
  
“As long as you remember  _us_ , then there will be no ‘ending’ even in forever,” Hikaru answered. The smile he gave the older was bright, it was mesmerizingly gorgeous. Seeing the wringkles on Inoo’s face fading away one line after another, Hikaru chuckled, stroking Inoo’s fluffy hair with his free hand. “I’m not used to being so honest with you like this, weren’t I? Damn it. Didn’t we use to throw insults and pranks to each other? This feels kind of awkward.”  
  
“It’s your fault that you’re dead,” Inoo pouted.  
  
Laughing, Hikaru replied, “Yeah, it is. But I’m glad I could tell you that. Gosh, I wish I had  _made it_ that time,”  
  
And with his palm cupping Inoo’s cheek, Hikaru drew Inoo’s face closer to his, slowly yet surely while closing his eyes, placing his lips on top of Inoo’s plump ones, kissing him gently. Despite being frigid and dead and all, for Inoo’s part, Hikaru’s kiss still felt warm nonetheless, and Inoo could sense the spark and the dazzling fireworks once he closed his eyes as well.  
  
He had missed Hikaru’s kiss so much, missed the younger’s taste, missed the way Hikaru sway his palm against his neck like this. When they parted, at last, it was the first time in forever Inoo Kei crept a contented smile on his pretty face.  
  
“That’s  _my_ Kei-chan and his  _beautiful_ smile,” Hikaru said, placing a quick peck the older on the lips.  
  
“Stop sweet-talking me, it creeps me out.” The older retorted but flustered anyway, burying his long finges in Hikaru’s brown hair as he kissed him this time.  
  
“Well, I’m sorry,” The brunette chuckled and kissed his lover once more before gettip up of the chair. “Now let’s get you some dry clothes,” Hikaru stood straight up, guiding Inoo Kei back to their used to be shared bedroom without releasing their linked hands.  
  
While leading themselves to the bedroom, the ghost realized that lots of things had changed within a year of his absence, like the decoration reorder and some replaced furnitures. There was a pile of literature books about health care and society next to Hikaru’s old, abandoned scetchbooks, on top of Inoo’s bookshelf. And then Hikaru noticed, Inoo had been helped by his new housemate a lot, a person who finally occupied the only empty room in their apartment after all this time. A part of him was jealous, because when he was alive, it was his dominancy to order the interior design of their house. Everything was changing and it was because he’s leaving this world.  
  
Hikaru was, however, glad that none of his hanged pictures with Inoo were taken down after his death. But at the same time it was saddening, because it imprisoned his loved one in the worst way he could imagine.  
  
They left the joint kitchen and dinning room nonetheless, abandoning the couple mugs full with hot chocolate in them altogether.  
  
  
  
  
  
Inoo let go off his hand from Hikaru’s grip once they entered the bedroom and the door was closed. For one second Hikaru was surprised, but his gasp and the thing he was ready to say fell once the older’s arms were wrapped around his neck again. Inoo hugged him so tight it might suffocate him albeit being dead. And Inoo, he buried his face onto the brunette’s neck, dipping his pianist fingers in Hikaru’s brown lock, feeling every remaining sensation he could sense—in which almost nothing left.  
  
The living was becoming aware of his own situation, that he’s might be having an  _illusion_. Maybe the Hikaru in front of him was nothing close to real, maybe Inoo had  _indeed_ turned crazy. But maybe it’s alright, though, Inoo thought. Having Hikaru near him after such a long time kind of sooth his boiling brain. And if illusioning Hikaru helped him feel better, then maybe being crazy doesn’t really matter. At least, only for tonight.  
  
“You’re damn cold,” He half whispered against Hikaru’s neck, feeling the other encircling his long arms against his waist, burying his face against Inoo’s shoulder and gripping the back of the older’s shirt as tight.  
  
“I’m sorry...”  
  
“Shut up,”  
  
There was a tremble in Inoo’s voice that Hikaru hadn’t failed to catch. They parted so slightly to see each other in the eye. Both eyes were empty; they miserably had no sparks nor a vigor in them—for one pair was dead and the other had lost their desire to live on. Since the day he gave up on his own life, Hikaru had long been fully aware that he would take at least half of Inoo’s soul away with him. Yet he absolutely couldn’t do  _anything_ about it, anything at all. He had no longer have such power to do so.  
  
Until realization hit him, that the only way to help Inoo to come back to his life was to end whatever thread that was still connecting their pinky fingers together.  
  
“So, you have a housemate now?”  
  
It was a sudden, unexpected question for Inoo, to be honest. Taken aback by his dead lover’s question, Inoo turned his face aside as fast as a flashlight and said grumpily,  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“Why? Isn’t it fun? Isn’t it good that you have company now?” Without letting go of their embrace, Hikaru pushed Inoo’s body towards the bed, gently dropped the older onto the seam, hovering above him. He leaned down to kiss Inoo’s neck while placing his knees in between the older’s legs in a spreading way.  
  
“ _No_. It’s _not_.” Inoo firmly retorded, as he tightened his hug even possible.  
  
Though he was being uncomfortable with the fact that Hikaru was pushing him to talk about his new housemate in a time like this, Inoo still let him unbuttoned the latches of his shirt one after another. He let Hikaru’s cold hands undoing his shirt and his pants and fondling against his skin so gently. The cold sensation of those hands sent something resembling electrocut down Inoo’s spine, and Inoo, though didn’t know whether this was real or not, had come to realize that he’d missed this gentle touch  _so much_.  
  
He’d missed Hikaru’s presence like hell that he wanted to just  _die_.  
  
Hikaru undressed the man below him, taking off his shirt, unbuckling his belt and pulled down the older’s sweat pants, leaving Inoo Kei all exposed and defenseless in his glory like a newborn baby. He caressed Inoo’s smooth skin from the chest to the lower stomach, giving a little massage to the flesh right above his manhood.  
  
And Inoo couldn’t feel anything but excitement towards their body contacts. It had been more than a year since the last time he let Hikaru roamed above him like this. It had just been too long since he could feel Hikaru’s kisses. When the need of oxygen was overwhelming for the living and his arousal starting to feel painful, Inoo let a whine split out of his mouth and Hikaru understood, as if by nature, that it was a request to go further.  
  
Giving Inoo one more kiss on the lips, Hikaru got on his knees and undressed himself, from the clothes he had worn the day he’s dead. And though he’s no longer alive, once he was all naked like Inoo, the older could see that his skin tone wasn’t turning blue; that there were no scars nor any horrifying trace of his accidents on the surface of his skin. It was indeed as if Hikaru had never been  _dead_ , and Inoo was beyond relieved about this fact. He welcomed Hikaru in his arms and let the younger prepared him like he’d done a hundred of times before, with one finger, two fingers, and three gradually. He let a pleasured moan out everytime those fingers hit his prostate, and he kissed Hikaru back when the younger reached for his addictive lips.  
  
When Hikaru drew himself a little, he stared at Inoo’s figure lovingly. The older was still beautiful, and somehow even more so now that they were given a chance to sew their love one last time. A year and Inoo had drowned himself into depression, a year that made Inoo exhausted of his endless hours of crying, had been turning his eyebags many shades darker, wrinkling the skin that connected his ears to his cheeknbones. Yet here he was under Hikaru’s soul, looking beautiful as ever, with those rosy cheeks and tired eyes, his pale plump lips parted provocatively and his complexion paler than that of a year ago.  
  
After a lazy kiss from Hikaru and a slight—almost invisible—nod from his beautiful lover, Hikaru slowly pushed himself into Inoo’s body, feeling Inoo swallowing his manhood completely. It felt good; they felt incredible, and as Hikaru started thrusting his hips in and out of Inoo’s body, the living started to let out whimpers and blisfull moans as he called Hikaru’s name over and over again, hugging Hikaru even closer, and never once letting go.  
  
But as he moved further, listening to the sound of their intercourse; their skin slamming against each other’s, Inoo’s moans, his own groans, and their kisses, Hikaru couldn’t help but wonder if Inoo’s roommate had done this to Inoo too. He couldn’t help but to think further, and get extremely jealous and mad at the same time despite being dead. Hikaru couldn’t control his emotions, that he ended up crashing himself down, landing a hard open-mouthed kiss to Inoo’s carven. The thought couldn’t make Hikaru concentrate fully on his lover, making every touch felt a hundred times hotter than it’s supposed to be—as if the touches were burning their skins. He ended up slamming himself hard against Inoo, almost  _violently_ fast and angry.  
  
“I bet he’s a really  _nice_ guy, staying by your side in your hard time day and night,” It hurt him to say this to Inoo, the lover he’d actually like to stay with forever. Hikaru felt himself becoming mad at the thought of someone else taking care of  _his_ Kei, taking note of every bit of the older’s vulnerability without his excuse. But at the same time he knew, that keeping Kei for himself, especially now that he’s dead, was also not something he should do. He knew Kei needed to go forward, to stay alive until the day it was his turn to be taken away.  
  
It shouldn’t be easy, but that was the only way at hand.  
  
“Hikaru— _ahhh_ —”  
  
“What’s his name, Kei-chan? I’d like to know. Where did he come from?”  
  
“Shut up…”  
  
“Does he attend collage? I bet he does, I saw his books in the living room. Something related to health care and society, that’s pretty cool. Is he a serious type?”  
  
“Shut up, Hikaru!!” Inoo cired, scrowling.  
  
Inoo was grimancing in pain, and he clasped his entrance tight around Hikaru’s member, that Hikaru suddenly became aware of what he had done to his lover. He was hurting Inoo with his ridiculously fast pace, he was hurting himself by hurting the one he loved the most. It was hurt,  _Inoo_ was hurt,  _they_ were hurt, but yet there were no other option left for the both of them. They had no longer lived in the same world. They ought to part.  
  
Out of the blue, Hikaru stopped his pace altogether. He was still inside Inoo, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He buried his face in the crooks of Inoo’s shoulder, feeling Inoo’s warm breaths against his hair. The older brought his hand up and landed his palm on Hikaru’s cold scalp, but Hikaru stayed still.  
  
“Hikaru—”  
  
“Kei,” Hikaru cut him midsentence. Clearing his illusory throat, Hikaru softly utter, half whispered, “Move on,”  
  
“… What?” There was a hesitancy in Inoo’s voice, a shade of disbelief of what Hikaru had just uttered.  
  
The ghost pulled himself up a little so that he could stare at Inoo’s glassy eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, with no one trying to break the stillness. Inoo was staring at Hikaru in disbelief; did  _Hikaru_ just want him to remove all the traces of his  _devotion_ to him, to abandon the treasured memories between the two of them? Did Hikaru just request for Inoo to love somebody else but him?  
  
“Move on,  _open_ yourself again. Give a chance for  _somebody else_ to love you, and give a chance to  _yourself_ to love them back.” Hikaru made it clear. “Once again.”  
  
Inoo’s eyes widened in surprise. The justification boiled his mind that he became utterly wordless, and angry to himself, to Hikaru, and to whoever made him lost Hikaru for eternity, that he clenched Hikaru’s member so tight the ghost wailed in pain.  
  
“I DON’T WANT TO!!” Inoo yelled loudly. He clung onto Hikaru’s cold neck and pulled the ghost down into a supposedly suffocating embrace. Burying his face onto Hikaru’s collarbone, once again Inoo couldn’t stop his tears from falling down his cheeks. “I love you, Hikaru!! I don’t want to be with anyone else but  _you_!”  
  
“Look at me—look at  _ME_!!” Hikaru cupped both of Inoo’s cheeks and forcefully made the older, who was trying his best to avoid to meet Hikaru’s eyes, stared at those cold black irises of a solid ghost. “ _I love you too_ , but I’m  _FUCKING_ dead!! You can’t be with someone who’s already  _dead_!!”  
  
Staring at those frustrated eyes, Inoo became aware of how cold Hikaru’s palms were. Seeing those cold eyes made him cry even louder. This was not what he wanted. And he couldn’t control love in any way, anyhow.  
  
“Then let me die so that we can be together!”  
  
“DON’T FUCKING KIDDING ME, INOO KEI!!” Hikaru roared, silencing Inoo altogether. When he was still alive, though Inoo was the only one who could handle his anger, everytime the younger became this mad, Inoo could only abide. After the yell, however, Hikaru lowered his voice, but it turned out bitter, and none of them liked it whenever it happened. “You don’t understand. You’re wasting my death to vain. I died for  _you_ , I  _wanted_ to protect you, don’t you remember?” Hikaru let go of Inoo’s right cheek, shifting his palm to caress Inoo’s hair. “That's why I’m fine. You shouldn’t come after me, because  _nobody_ wants that.  _I_ don’t want that.”  
  
“ _Hikaru_ …” Inoo sobbed.  
  
“Promise me, okay?” Hikaru dropped his forehead and pressed it to Inoo’s, their noses touched one another, as he started thrusting his hips into Inoo’s entrance once again, starting from a very slow motion. “Promise me to be happy until we meet again.”  
  
His moans of pleasure mixed with his hurtful whimpers, and Inoo welcomed Hikaru’s kisses with his wet lips. He couldn’t stop sobbing even when Hikaru hit his sweet spot repeatedly. He couldn’t let go of the ghost; not yet, because it would be the last time they had intercourse with each other. It would be the last time for Inoo to be able to embrace Hikaru in his arms, kissing him, tasting Hikaru’s flavor, feeling his dead lover’s member thrusted into him, sensing his illusionary breaths, the sensation of his fingers buried into those brown locks, tracing his fingers on that firm and toned skin.  
  
And those last climaxes that he would never forget in his entire life.  
  
Ever.  
  
  
  
“ _Promise me you’ll live for me…_ ”  
  
  
  
  
  
After a long day of college and part time work in an izakaya near the town, Yabu Kota went home at dawn to find Inoo’s favorite couple mugs filled with chocolate that had already been cold, barely sipped at all. The younger didn’t usually use two mugs at the same time; he would just use the mug with the kanji ‘light’ printed on it, the one that used to belong to the pale male’s died lover, Hikaru. There might be a guest coming before he came home, he thought, but again, Inoo would  _never_ use his special couple mugs to serve chocolate to ordinary guests.  
  
Unless if his guest was  _Hikaru_ himself, which was absolutely  _impossible_.  
  
Yabu sighed, a struggle appeared in his mind whether he should cleaned up the mugs or not, because he didn’t want Inoo to get mad at him. But it was like, past three in the morning, Inoo would probably be sleeping by then, so the chocolate liquid might not be needed anymore. And so, Yabu dropped a bag of chocolate pie on the dinning table and placed his backpack and his winter coat on one of the dinning chairs, and brought the two mugs to the kitchen. He put them on the sink with one hand, and rotated the faucet to the warm water with another. He began cleaning the mugs up, pouring the almost untouched chocolate liquid onto the sink before soaping them, and washing them in warm water before placing them back into their original place, of the second hanging shelf to the right.  
  
Wiping his hands with a nearby dry towel, Yabu leaned his lower back against the sink, blinking so slowly as he stared at the nothingness on the wall across of him. It made Yabu sad that Inoo was still in a depression even a year after his past lover had left him. Now that the two mugs had been brought out of its shelf, Yabu became even twice as concerned. Why did he do that, was Inoo okay? He thought to himself.  
  
Running a hand through his reddish locks, Yabu wandered his eyes to the joint kitchen and the living room. It had been past three quarters of a year since he moved into this apartment, giving company to a person he caught almost killed himself by trying to jump off of the the tallest building in town. At least half of the inside of the apartment had now been filled with his belongings, and the place no longer looked as dead as the first time he moved in. But most of Hikaru’s were still there too. At first Yabu hadn’t wanted to get rid of them because they were precious to Inoo, but now, a year after Hikaru’s death, Inoo hadn’t seemed to look cured even for a bit, and it worried him like crazy.  
  
His presence felt void in this apartment, even after so much efforts and times he had spent to show Inoo that  _someone else_ cares about him.  
  
Yabu stood up straight and dragged his feet to the bathroom. He was tired, he felt like giving up almost everything. But at the same time he knew he couldn’t back down, because, be said or not, Inoo needed him, and he didn’t want Inoo to end up in somewhere cold and horrifying alone. And there, he didn’t fall in love with Inoo because he pitied him; he fell in love with Inoo because he witnessed Inoo’s love and devotion towards his past lover, and therefore Yabu wanted to help the precious younger male be free, from everything that had chained him into his current state.  
  
For the moment, Yabu just wanted to take a shower and sleep afterward, because he’s  _dead_ tired.  
  
But he stopped his feet thoroughly right on the doorstep when he saw the bathroom floor still flooded with water. His eyes widened like never before, when he saw a kitchen knife lying around the floor. He parted his thin lips and gaped panickedly, before turning on his heels and dashing towards Inoo’s bedroom, almost slamming open its door, afraid of what he might see inside, afraid of his own thought of losing Inoo.  
  
The younger boy, however, was found laying on his bed, his back facing Yabu. The oldest could see Inoo’s bare shoulders, his exposed nape, and the skin which was not hidden under the blanket that was pulled up until his upper arms. Yabu sighed in relief when he noticed Inoo’s still breathing. He stepped further inside and closed the door behind him, before walking towards Inoo’s bed. It was when he sat on the edge of the bed when he noticed Inoo’s wet—yet drying—clothings—of shirts, sweat pants, and his boxers—were set on the nightstand.  
  
When he averted his gaze to Inoo’s face, however, he was surprised that the younger hadn’t actually been sleeping. Inoo’s eyes were still open, though half, lazily staring at the window across of them.  
  
“ _Kei_ …” Yabu gently whispered, placing a palm to the top of Inoo’s arm. He bent down a little so that he could see Inoo’s beautiful face better. But the younger seemed empty. He didn’t even blink when Yabu tried to call his name.  
  
It broke Yabu’s heart into pieces. Had he just lost his chance to cure Inoo from his despair? It felt hurt, so much hurt that he felt his throat tightening. He furrowed all of the muscles in his face and yet trying his best not to cry. He just couldn’t see Inoo like this, not anymore.  
  
“Kei, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to  _me_.” Yabu pleaded, lowering his head, still trying to get Inoo’s attention. “Stop this,  _please_? It’s torturing  _me_ , and you know that, right?”  
  
 _... stop this, please, it’s torturing me…_  
  
And that was it. That utterance was what it took to make Inoo averted his gaze to Yabu. And when their eyes met, Yabu could sense that, at last, maybe just a little but it was  _there_ ; a part of Inoo was starting to live up.  
  
Inoo shifted his position until he was laying on his back, completely facing his housemate that had always been there for him in his hard time, for almost a year, during his illness. Yabu was the one taking care of him, when he no longer wanted his family to see how miserable he had become after Hikaru’s death. Yabu had always been by his side, taking care of him, saving him from his suicide attempts, showering him with affections that he was lacking.  
  
Inoo opened his mouth and uttered, “Kota,”  
  
“… Yes?”  
  
“Help me,”  
  
Yabu was almost happy when Inoo called his name, but he was turned confused when Inoo asked for help. What help, did Inoo feel hurt in any where? Was he okay? The tall brunette frowned, afraid of what might come out of Inoo’s mouth next.  
  
“… What do you mean?” He tried to confirm.  
  
There was a hesitancy in Inoo’s feature. The younger threw his gaze away and wandered his eyes for a moment before trying his best to fix them onto Yabu’s curious orbs. Those eyes looked afraid and broken, Inoo noticed, yet they were hoping and loving at the same time. And he remembered what Hikaru had said earlier that night, that he ought to open himself again, to give a chance for someone else aside from Hikaru to love him, and to give the same chance for himself one more time.  
  
Without Yabu knowing, Inoo had promised Hikaru to live forward.  
  
“I’m  _moving on_ …” Inoo said, weak but as crystally as the color of the ocean.  
  
And the request was made clear. Yabu felt like there was an explosion in his heart, because finally,  _finally_ , maybe there’s a chance to fix everything that had been broken. Maybe there’s a chance to cure everything, to erase all the pain in their hearts. Yabu had been tired, but at the same time he was ready, he felt more than ready to lead Inoo out of his dark cage. And this time, the hand that Inoo would hold tight onto would be Yabu’s.  
  
The older of the two crashed down onto Kei’s body, embracing him lovingly and protectively. He pressed their foreheads together, letting the tip of his nose brushing against Inoo’s one.  
  
With a wide, contented, hopeful smile on his face, Yabu replied,  
  
“I’m here for you, remember that…”


End file.
